Saturday, April 18, 2015

[UNDER DE-STRUCTION?]

[UNDER DE-STRUCTION: See "Labor Unions Trump Luddites" above: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2015/05/working-on-angles-to-make-criminalizing.html ]There are two RICO prosecutable sides
to firing employees for attempting to organize labor. The side everybody
naturally thinks of is the extortionate side – the pain of
unemployment. The side everybody seems to miss is the illegal blocking of
participation in the legally prescribed process of assembling a
collective bargaining unit – solely for the sake of depriving employees
of monies they could win from the employer in true free
market negotiating.

Think almost perfect parallel with prolifers sued under RICO for
blocking clinics – except that prolifers slipped off the RICO hook because they were not seeking to squeeze clinics for financial gain.

Let’s make up a situation which is all blocking -- no firing; no extortion.
Imagine that the federal organizing formula required online application (Obamacare
style) and that for some reason the computers needed to be on the work site – and that the employer permanently barred employees from computer access. If this is RICO/Hobbs prosecutable, then, firing is too. Firing employees means they no longer have anything to organize -- inherently severs them from the legal prescribed process. Deprivation of economic participation for attempting to organize – not to reduce staff or for poor performance -- ought to be RICO/Hobbs prosecutable all by itself. But the
offense has been practiced without prosecution so much for so long (the free market?) that
it may be hard for the courts to ever get their heads around the extortionate
side of it.Unions do not have to wait for prosecutors to catch on – should be able
to seek injunctions against blocking of the federally prescribed
organizing process – or sue after the fact. Get cases going; watch the
perps run for the hills while the cases run their courses (not sure what
their liability will be) – we can organize the country out from under
them before the rulings come down.

Alternate route: states can make blocking of and/or extortion against
union organizing activity a felony punishable by one year – that would
meet a requirement for RICO prosecution. If pro union legislators
everywhere attempt to pass such legislation every year – whether
successful or not – I can think of no better ed-u-cational process about
the criminality of habitually depriving most Americans of their
economic and political wherewithal that Americans have gotten so used to
tolerating (except maybe if our ed-u-cator-in-chief decides to make it
his or her number one topic).

About Me

In 1944 I arrived on earth (if from somewhere else in the universe, those memories have been erased for security reasons).
For more: http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-more-complete-profile.html